Against neuroscience imperialism

Abstract

This chapter identifies four criteria that have been proposed to ground a normative critique of scientific imperialism (SI). These include: the objection from the disunity of science, the objection from disciplinary autonomy, the objection from counterfactual scientific progress, and the objection from cumulative constraints. The chapter provides some conceptual distinctions about neuroscience imperialism (NI) and a normative assessment of prominent calls for NI. There are two reasons why NI deserves detailed philosophical scrutiny. First, various instances of NI exemplify the features of SI in especially clear terms, and thus make NI an interesting test case for assessing the merits of SI contributions. And second, NI contributions have potentially widespread implications for modelling and theorizing across the vast range of natural and social disciplines they target. The chapter focuses on some sets of calls for NI, which respectively targets the economic modelling of choice and entrenched philosophical conceptions of free agency.